The most common troublemakers are the Malaysian Trumpet Snail (Melanoides tuberculata) and the

Ramshorn snail (Planorbis sp),

Some fish keepers think that they are useful and some invest efforts to get rid of them.

                                                                     Ramshorn snail

                                                              Malaysian Trumpet Snail

Those who think that they are useful call them aquarium bulldozers and praise their ability to eat leafs,

dead fish and uneaten food and keep the tank "clean" from troubles.

Other fish keepers just can't see their present in the tank and spend time to get rid of them claiming

that those snails disfigure the tank, they also say that the snails create new colonies in short time

and those colonies create excreta and quickly deteriorating water quality.  

First question to be asked is how do they get there?

Most of the snails introduced into aquariums when we add new plants, they laid their eggs on the leaves

and those eggs attached to the leaves strongly.In some places those eggs can introduced into aquariums

through tap water.

The second question that needs to be asked is how we can prevent them from entering our tanks.

Snails can be prevented entering our tank by using commercial snail killers or by bathing the leaves in a

vessel with Potassium permanganate till the water became pale pink.

Wile using potassium permanganate recommended wearing gloves, potassium permanganate known

as a strong oxidizer that can cause to burns.

To my opinion small colony of snails can be useful, by eating dead leaves, eating uneaten food,

dead fish and burrowing the gravel they can help keeping water quality.

For many years fish keepers all over the world try a lot of ways to get rid of those snails,

the common method is to add to the tank snail eating fish as the clown loaches, clown loch eat Ramshorn

snail but have hard time cracking the Malaysian Trumpet Snail shell, Pakistan and zebra loaches known

as well as snails eaters.

Using chemical products is also an option, those chemicals kill snails very quickly but after using

them recommended to suck their shells out and to change water otherwise it will cause to

deteriorating water quality.

Make sure the product is safe to fish.some use leaf of lettuce as a trap night, the snails climb on

the lettuce to eat and than you can take the lettuce out, this is a good way to keep snail

population down but not to eradicate them.

I prefer the chemical method because it is the only way to wipe them out completely but as

I mentioned we have to be cautious; changing water and sucking shells after treatment can be

the last snail treatment yow will do….